this is "nightline." tonight. a country thrown into turmoil over a jogger's rape. now 30 years later, the first time we're hearing all sides. >> i was beaten and left for dead. >> days of police questioning leading to confessions. confessn the media firestorm and a shocking twist. >> i saw the lady. she was jogging. >> sending the case back into the national spotlight, into a climate, changed to this day. this special edition of "nightline," one night in central park, will be right back.

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(woman vo) imagine how life can unfold. ask a dermatologist how you may reduce excessive underarm sweating with qbrexza. our three contestants are all at the big ikea table. contestant #1, impressive knife skills. but contestant #2 fights back by using fresh parsley. make room for the judge! live lounge differently. make room for the judge! ikea. "nightline," one night in central park, continues. here now, byron pitts. >> i absolutely loved central park. >> central park is like center of the universe kind of. >> but by the 1980s, this place that was meant to be a central recreation hub for the entire city really becomes more of a

barrier. >> night would fall, and it would change. it would become a place where you'd be nervous about going. >> where in 1989 you must remember that the city real difficult ivisive, polariz position. >> this is part where the central park narrative occurred. >> reporter: it became a lightning rod at the inch section of race, class and politics in america. >> that wednesday night, it was easter vacation. kids would hang out a little later. there was no school until monday. i seen a group of kids entering the park. at the time i followed. we go from hanging out with friends, thinking that you're going to go skateboarding in the

park or walk around late to mayhem. >> we just got a call of a disorderly group of 30 to 40 males inside central park, harassing people. >> we started to get a lot of radio runs of a group of black and hispanic teenagers, assaulting and harassing people. >> an assault at 102 east drive in central park. >> i would run to the park, usually entering at the 84th street entrance, just by the metropolitan museum of art. >> we were getting a lot of 911 calls. >> they're chasing a large group over there, about 30 to 40 people. >> a big foot chase. a couple cars come, scooters. when it was all said and done, we had five kids. >> and at first, it seems like a relatively minor thing. they're going to send these kids to family court.

and then this woman is found in the park, covered in blood, near death. >> trish knocked unconscious, barely, barely alive. she actually had been dragged down to the stream in the ravine. >> the discovery of trish lying in the ravine changes everything. >> i have seen traumatized patients many, many times, but i have never seen somebody like destroyed. >> this is the cheekbone, and this was crushed severely. >> we all know what rape is. we can all describe it, but there's nothing like seeing something like this, the atrocity of such an act. >> we ended up with five arrests. two of the five why kevin richardson and raymond santana. >> we had to go back out and start getting more of the kids that were involved in the attack. that included yusef salom. cory weiss and antwon mcray. >> reporter: days of questioning

began. >> those that are 14 or 15 are supposed to have a parent or guardian present, and largely they do, but i think even the parents are pretty naïve about what's going on. >> and they used us. they used our lack of knowledge of the justice system against us. >> they were all starting to talk and give stories about what happened. >> these interrogations are not recorded in any way, no the written down. >> these are not my rules. these are the rules i was handed. and that's what we played by. >> i didn't know what was going on. i wanted to get the hell home. >> give me what he wanted. >> if you take an individual who's 15 years old and put that individual in a room by themselves with two to four to six officers, some of them wanting to attack you, that individual would be terrified. it could be almost tantamount to someone having a gun to your head. >> all of these kids, and in

many cases their parents, believed that they would get to go home if they implicated oh, people, if they were helpful in the right way, and they were desperate to get out of that room. >> no detective of mine would ever say anything like that. you're going to go home. in a crime like this? never. >> they played the parents against each other. they played the boys against each other, and they made up all of these stories to get their arrest and their convinces. >> how do you coerce somebody when he's sitting there with his parents? it's [ bleep ]. okay? >> elizabeth was the prosecutor in the central park jogger case. by all accounts she was incredibly diligent. she was not one of these prosecutors who were just in it to win. >> in the early morning of the hours of the second day, the teenagers make a fateful decision. they decide to start talking on

videotape. >> this is my first rape. i've never done this before and my last time doing it. >> kevin richardson starts to talk. implicating him self in this night of mayhem. numerous assaults and possibly the rape of tricia miley. >> i came over there. >> and it's not just richardson. other teenagers are implicating themselves on video, too. too. all of them except yusef salom. he never goes on video and never makes a written statement. >> when i first saw those tapes, i didn't disbelieve them. like anybody else, when i watch a confession tape, my first impulse is, whoa. an innocent person really wouldn't do that. >> was it true? >> i don't remember saying it. >> my second impulse is to listen to the details, not

inplus inpl influenced by them. >> how did those marks get there? she has a fractured skull. she was hit with a very, very heavy object. you saw that picture. you don't get these lines, you don't get a fractured >> when you watch cory, it's almost like he's desperate to get it right. he tells one story this moment, this story at another moment. when you look at false confession cases, when you told them, they're going to change it. >> of course there's going to be inconsistencies between the statements. in my experience, when you take statements, there's kind of a range, right? >> reporter: meanwhile, tricia miley is clinging to life in the hospital. >> she was in a coma for a week. and then she started opening her eyes and looking around. >> reporter: little did she know, she was waking up into a media firestorm. >> a terror spree through central park. >> they found her, and they gang

raped her. >> the shockwaves of the tragedy felt both north and south of the park. >> it took politics, rape, racial politics and controversy. >> and it contributed to this heightened sense of fear in new york and this first for vengeance. >> the first trial involved three defendants, raymond santana, antron mccrea and yusef salom. clearly the statements were the most important evidence. >> the looks on the jurors' faces when they watched those videotapes told a devastating story for the defense. >> it's clear, as it has been for a year that prosecutors will depend on videotaped statements by the suspects themselves, but when the defense went on offense this afternoons its strategy also became clear. the teens' lawyers say

confessions were cleverly staged. >> there was a huge problem in this case. and they didn't have dna evidence against these defendants. they didn't have physical evidence against these defendants. >> so we, as prosecutors were completely up front with the jury about the fact that semen had been recovered, the jogger, which didn't match any of the three people who were on trial. >> after ten days of deliberation, the verdict, salom. santana and mccrea all convicted of the rape of the jogger. >> the next trial was kevin richardson and corey weiss. and once again, therelied on th. >> the tape was brutal. some of the jurors looked like they were having a hard time watching it. >> in the second trial the jury struggled with cory weiss's

confessions. there were two statements. they were all over the place. the facts were contradictory, self-contradicted. >> i didn't believe that he had anything to do with the rape. cory weiss's confession didn't make any sense. several of the jurors kept at me and at me. they pushed me to go to the other direction. and i wish to god i had just hung the jury on that, and that's, that's been my biggest regret for 30 >> weiss found guilty of sexual abuse, first degree assault and riot. then with resfoepect to richard, guilty on every charge. >> by 1997, four of the men completed their sentences and were released from prison. when we come back, an unexpected admission that put the story back in the headlines. >> i thought i left it there

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there are roadside attractions. and then there's our world-famous on-road attraction. the 2019 glc. lease the glc 300 suv for just $479 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. "nightline," one night in central park, continues. here again, byron pitts. >> reporter: by 2002, the central park five were in the back of everyone's consciousness. cory weiss was the last one still in prison. then suddenly, one of his fellow inmates comes forward with a story that would change everything. >> a serial predator steps forward and turns the case upside down. >> reyes is a convicted,

homicidal rapist, doing 33 years to life in new york prison. >> i was a monster, man. i did so many bad things to so many people and harmed them in so many ways. >> he's a bona fide psychopath, he raped his own mother, and he raped and murdered a pregnant woman in front of her own two children. >> reyes came forward to say that he had been the one who had committed the attack upon the jogger. >> did you attack the central park jogger? >> yeah, i did. >> did you rape her? >> yes. >> did you beat her? >> mm-hm. >> did you leave her for dead? >> i thought i left her there for dead. >> matthias reyes manages to get the attention of law enforcement and they do a dna test, they take his dna and compare it, and voila, they have what they never had in the trial in 1990, which

is a match. a perfect match. >> i was like, oh, that's great. we got the final guy, the guy who'd gotten away originally in 1989. but then he turned around that he did it by himself. >> i was alone that night. i saw the lady. she was jogging. at the right-hand side, i saw a piece of branch there, i struck over her head with the branch and she fell forward. i grabbed her to drag her inside of the bushes. as i dragged her there, i remember that i took off her clothes. >> reyes knew some things about the victim and the crime that had never been revealed and that only a person who was there would know. >> the investigation into matthias reyes and his story was conducted by the district attorney's office. >> the spring into the summer of in 1989 there was a rash of violent rapes, all along madison

avenue, culminating in murder of a woman on 97th street. the east side rapist they were calling him. >> the police officer investigating that had his dna marker in that file. one of the rapes associated with that case took place in central park, not far from where the central park jogger had been attacked. >> the rape on april 17th we knew nothing about. none of us in homicide knew about april 17th. sex crimes dealt with rapes. there's no sharing of information. maybe there is today, but back then, you know, they had a full case load. ours ridicu >> r of the fiv m. >> now that does not mean that the five former defendants are exonerated. it doesn't prove that they're innocent. it just means that in the eyes

of the law their convictions no longer exist. >> reporter: but some of the injuries were too severe to be inflicted by just one attacker. >> when matthias reyes says he did it alone, it's not just the prosecutors and cops who don't believe it, trish herself doesn't think he could have done it himself. >> there is medical evidence to support that more than one person was responsible for the attack on me. >> the new york city police department ends up feeling it needs to do something to tell its side of the story. and so the police commissioner decides to appoint michael armstrong, who would deliver the armstrong report. >> i don't think there is any credible evidence at all that anything was done in an improper way to make them talk. >> so the police led

investigation concluded that the police didn't do anything wrong. >> the next chapter in the story is they sue. they feel that they were railroaded into prison. they lost years of their lives. they want justice. they want money. >> so in 2013 this documentary comes out, and it's made by sarah burns, ken burns and david mcmahon. >> no money can bring a life that was missing with the time that was taken away, bring it back. >> it succeeds not just in raising what reasonable people would consider doubt as to the guilt of the central park five, it raises the possibility that they're actually innocent. >> that film was made while we had the equivalent of a gag order from a federal judge. we could not speak publicly, the daughter of the fil m h worked for the legal team of the five. so i didn't think we'd get a fair hearing.

>> a judge has approved a41 million settlement with the five men wrongly convicted in the central park jogger attack. >> the settlement in this case was $41 million. most of the defendants each received $7 million. cory weiss received $13 million. >> this is amazing. >> it's a classic settlement. on the one hand, the defendants get $41 million. and on the other hand, the city sticks by its cops and prosecutors. says we are not going to hang them out to dry. they did not engage in police misconduct or prosecutorial misconduct. >> i just don't understand a settlement for that kind of behavior. it's outrageous. >> we were ready to go to the supreme court. >> reporter: when we come back, where they are now. at mercedes-benz, we make every vehicle to be eye-catchingly beautiful.

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>> my work now is standing with survivors of brain injury, of sexual assault, of other kinds of trauma. i believe they gain strength, too, to move forward.

our three contestants are all at the big ikea table. who's going to be tonight's winning chef?